


Still Be There Tomorrow

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Complicated Relationships, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Hurt/Comfort, Nudity, Pre-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22517032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Despite her better judgement, Rey takes care of Kylo when an attempted poisoning leaves him helpless.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 22
Kudos: 127
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Still Be There Tomorrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyGwenllian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyGwenllian/gifts).



Nausea. Fever. Disorientation.

The sensations flash as bright as lightning and disappear just as fast. Rey remembers nights spent curled in her den on Jakku after too long in the scorching sun, when heat exhaustion and dehydration carved her insides out and left her shaking. She remembers the twisted-gut feeling of drinking from the wrong water trough and realising it only hours later once the sickness hit. But it’s dry season on Ajan Kloss, milder and cooler than it’s been for months, and she’s only taken water from the pleasantly chilled filter tanks. Maybe she’s picked up a virus in the crowded mess tent. Maybe she’s been bitten by one of the stinging insects that sometimes slip through the protective netting around the base.

Or maybe it’s not her at all. Rey is alone in her cabin when she feels the telltale rattle of some distant location converging with hers, tastes recycled starship air and hears echoes through the amplifying cone of the Force bond. Harsh breathing. Running water. Rey turns her head and sees him, and she knows at once that the sickness isn’t hers.

Kylo Ren is sitting on the floor of what from Rey’s side looks like her desk nook. He’s completely naked, head bowed and hugging his knees to his chest. Rivulets of water drip from his hair and run down his back. No steam – the water’s cold. Puddles of it seep into Rey’s carpet. In his soggy desolation, he apparently hasn’t noticed the bond yet.

‘You look well,’ she says, loud so he can hear her over the roar of his shower.

Kylo’s head snaps up. Resentment mushrooms from his shapeless cloud of misery, and in a glimpse of shared thought, Rey knows he didn’t want anyone to see him in this state. He’s locked himself inside his quarters, dismissed every aide and guard, disabled every droid. But he can’t hide from her. 

‘Flu?’ she asks.

‘Poison.’ His voice is rough. ‘It’ll be out of my system soon. You’d be wise not to be here when I’m back at full strength.’

‘How frightening. Would you mind turning the shower off in the meantime? It’s flooding my room, is all.’

Without unfolding his huddled body, Kylo waves a hand and makes the water stop. He can’t be on death’s door if he’s using the Force to turn off taps. But he doesn’t make any attempt to get up. He just sits there on the floor, bare and dripping.

Rey has seen this man cry, scream and bleed. She’s seen glimpses of his better nature and technicolour panoramics of his worse. She’s had him inside her – metaphorically, spiritually, but also literally, in the heady moments of impulse that occasionally overtake her common sense when he’s around. She knows the caf-bitter taste of his mouth and the desperate whimper he makes when he comes. But she’s never actually seen him naked. There’s never been time to waste removing clothes on the rare times they’ve given in to temptation. She’s never seen the twin dimples above his tailbone or the dusting of dark, wiry hair on his thighs. She’s never seen the way his taut stomach folds into surprisingly soft rolls when he hunches like he’s doing now.

He’s never looked so helpless before. She acts without really thinking about it. Their enmity will still be there tomorrow.

‘Come on.’ He drips all over her when she hauls him to his feet, and at least the cold water helps distract her from the awkwardness of seeing him like this. The towel she hands him is too small. It barely covers his shoulders, let alone the flaccid cock that until now she’s only ever seen hard and wanting. She has no idea where the bed is on his side of the bond, but she leads him to hers, trusting that the Force will somehow work out the geography. 

‘I’ll be fine in a few hours,’ Kylo tells her unprompted, as she lowers his dead weight onto the mattress. The skin he chilled to blue under the cold shower is already growing hot again, burning up from inside as his body fights whatever toxin has reduced him to this state. ‘I’ve already taken the antidote. It just needs time to work.’

‘Who poisoned you?’

‘A jealous advisor. He’ll be dealt with.’

His flat tone could mean nothing more than exhaustion, but Rey gets the sense that jealous advisors aren’t a rare encounter in Kylo’s life. She wonders if this is the first time he’s had to retreat to his room in agony, fighting his way through a botched assassination attempt with no help or medical oversight because he’s afraid to let anyone else see him vulnerable. There’s no doubt in her mind that he deserves his pain. Both for whatever he’s done to make enemies of his advisors, and more generally for choosing to stay in that viper’s pit in the first place. ‘Ben,’ she says, breaking her own rule about calling him by name. ‘Is this really worth it? Is the throne so important?’

She’s not surprised when he doesn’t answer. Fumbling blindly for her covers, he tucks himself into a ball and wraps a protective arm around his stomach. His wet hair streaks Rey’s pillow and he scrunches his eyes closed. There are tracks on his cheeks, and it’s not all shower water.

She should leave him. She’s done enough – more than enough. More than he has any right to expect from her, in more ways than one. But Rey’s heart aches as she remembers all those nights alone in the Jakku desert waiting for the sickness to end. Parched mouth. Burning forehead. Lonely, wishing bitterly for a soft touch or a soothing word. She should leave, but she sits down on the edge of the bed and strokes the wet hair out of his face. ‘I’ll stay with you while you sleep it off,’ she offers.

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘Too bad. You’re in no state to drive me off.’

He makes a vague, angry noise that could be directed at her or the universe. Then he goes quiet. After a while, she thinks he’s asleep.

Until: ‘I don’t know.’

Rey startles up from the silent daze she’d been sinking into. ‘What?’

He’s so quiet she can barely hear him. ‘If it’s worth it. If the throne’s so important. I don’t know any more. I have nothing else left to weigh it against.’

_ By your own choice,  _ Rey doesn’t say. He knows it as well as she does, and she knows he wouldn’t be admitting it aloud if he were feeling even a fraction less wretched. ‘You could come back to the Resistance,’ she says instead. ‘Any time you wanted.’

‘You think the Resistance would be less likely to want me dead than my advisors?’

‘I think they’d have to get through me first,’ she says. ‘Ben, you’d have me on your side. All you have to do is come home.’

This time, he doesn’t surprise her with an answer. She senses a wave of emotion too strong to put a name to, so strong that she almost flinches back, almost breaks the bond on self-protective instinct. Then it passes, as does Ben’s consciousness. He’s asleep. Limp and wet and exhausted on her bed.

Maybe in the morning he’ll wake up with clearer eyes and a hardened heart and they’ll be back on opposite sides of the war. Maybe – probably – this is all another stupid mistake. Rey knows she shouldn’t do it. Knows how badly it’s ended every other time she’s tried to reach out to him. But he’s here in her bed, soft all over like she’s never seen him before, and she wants so badly to hold him close and feel his chest rise and fall. Even if it’s only for one night.

So she does. She curls around him from behind and kisses his bare shoulder, and something in his aura relaxes.  _ Safe hands, _ she hears – a groggy echo in his faintly stirring thoughts.  _ Not alone. _ He’s hurting badly. His system is fighting. But the hard knot of fear releases on contact with her skin.

If she’d known his weakness could feel so good, she’d have been tempted to poison him herself. It’s not a pretty thought. Nothing about tonight is pretty. But she can’t bring herself to feel sorry.


End file.
